Page 72 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
“It is by mine.”
She sighed. “That explains so much.”
His thumb brushed the back of her hand.
Beyond the curtain, the whispers swelled again. The court would want an explanation. The king would want amusement. The marchesa would want credit. Lorenzo would want to be insufferable, bless his Italian soul. Lorenzo would need a lot of diplomacy, that one.
And Marguerite, who had arrived in Naples prepared to disappear into the future she had chosen before love altered the map, stood behind velvet with a man who had just destroyed every clause she had ever written to protect herself.
She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her gloved hands and lifted her chin.
“Come, then, Your Grace,” she said, and her smile steadied. “Let us go commit the rest of the faux pas properly.”
Epilogue
The palazzo faced the sea, no doubt built by an architect who understood that happiness required windows. Every morning, light came over the Bay of Naples in sheets of gold, slipped across the marble floors, touched the painted ceilings, the blue-and-white tiles, the vases of lemon blossoms, and finally reached the bed where her husband waited for her to wake.
This morning, however, Tristan had risen before her.
A suspicious development in any marriage.
By the time Marguerite stepped onto the balcony, dressed for travel, he stood below in the courtyard, speaking to two sailors with the implacable authority of a man who had once commanded storms and now applied the same seriousness to luggage. Their household moved around him in cheerful disorder. Footmen carried trunks. Elsie scolded a groom for placing a hatbox beneath a case of books. Lorenzo, who had arrived an hour early and done nothing useful since, lounged against the fountain in a coat the exact shade of ripepomegranates, eating sugared almonds and offering advice no one had requested.
They were leaving for Sicily on an official visit.
The phrase should have produced seriousness in a diplomat’s wife. Indeed, Marguerite had prepared several serious thoughts for the occasion. She had selected the proper gowns, reviewed the names of every significant Sicilian noble family, memorized three political grievances, two commercial concerns, and one regrettable hunting accident that ought not to be mentioned before the Prince of Butera unless one wished to watch dinner collapse into hereditary bitterness.
She was ready. She was also so happy that the very air seemed to have entered into conspiracy with her heart.
Naples in the late morning smelled of lemon flowers, warm stone, and coffee, and the scent was so good that, as a side enterprise, they should consider exporting it back to England.
From the balcony, she could see the water glittering beyond the terraced gardens, while gulls wheeled and cried above the masts. She had wanted, for weeks now, to bathe in that impossible water. It looked less like sea than liquefied sky, and yet every time she had neared it, her bones had lodged a formal protest. The Mediterranean was far colder than its beauty suggested.
Tristan looked up.
That still undid her.
After months of marriage, after a wedding in Naples, another in the English chapel for the benefit of British legality, and a private ceremony conducted by Lorenzo under what he claimed was an ancient pirate rite but which Marguerite suspected he had composed over breakfast, her husband could still look at her and make her feel as if she had stepped into sunlight.
“Ready, Duchess?” he called.
She rested her gloved hands on the balcony rail. “For Sicily, yes. For whatever you are concealing, no.”
His mouth tilted. There. The expression of a man with a secret. In diplomacy, her husband remained a wild card. It had worked so far because the Sea Wolf was wildly respected, King Joachim found him entertaining, Queen Caroline found him useful, and every admiral in Naples seemed to believe that a man who could turn a ship through hostile shoals could probably turn a treaty through worse. Still, he had a habit of making decisions with the private confidence of a cannon being loaded. He informed people after the fuse was lit.
She descended to the courtyard and accepted his hand into the carriage.
“You are smiling like a man who has hidden something in state papers,” she said as they rattled toward the harbor.
“I am wounded by your distrust.”
“You are married to a diplomat. Distrust is one of my love languages.”
He laughed under his breath and brought her gloved hand to his mouth.
That, too, was suspicious. Tristan generally kissed her hand when he wished to disarm her, claim her, distract her, or avoid answering a direct question. As these purposes frequently overlapped, she narrowed her eyes at him and resolved to remain vigilant.
At the harbor, the felucca waited in the sun, its lateen sail loose and pale against the sky. Beyond it, HMS Resolute rode at anchor, sterner than the Neapolitan vessels around her, and yet dear to Marguerite now in a way that surprised her. The ship had once seemed a floating scandal, then a battlefield, then a home between homes. Its worn decks had held the worst of her fear and the best of her dreams.
